We discuss her conversion, evangelical purity culture, the book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Consent and 3 Paradigms, Transgenderism and Feminism, Waves of Feminism and her work at George Fox.

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Special Guest: Abigail Rine Favale.

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• Into the Deep: An Unlikely Catholic Conversion — Into the Deep traces one woman's spiritual odyssey from birthright evangelicalism through postmodern feminism and, ultimately, into the Roman Catholic Church. As a college student, Abigail Favale experienced a feminist awakening that reshaped her life and faith. A decade later, on the verge of atheism, she found herself entering the oldest male-helmed institution on the planet--the last place she expected to be. With humor and insight, the author describes her gradual exodus from Christian orthodoxy and surprising swerve into Catholicism. She writes candidly about grappling with wounds from her past, Catholic sexual morality, the male priesthood, and an interfaith marriage. Her vivid prose brings to life the wrenching tumult of conversion--a conversion that began after she entered the Church and began to pry open its mysteries. There, she discovered the startling beauty of a sacramental cosmos, a vision of reality that upended her notions of gender, sexuality, identity, and authority. Into the Deep is a thoroughly twenty-first-century conversion, a compelling account of recovering an ancient faith after a decade of doubt.
• Kissing Purity Culture Goodbye — Foremost among these is the reductive notion of “purity” itself, which becomes more or less synonymous with virginity. In this understanding, a person exists in a default state of purity, which can then be corrupted or lost through sexual activity. The implied trajectory is from purity into corruption, from which only partial redemption is possible. Virginity, once lost, can never truly be regained. This inverts the arc of the Christian life, in which one moves from original corruption into purification by grace. While the biblical understanding of purity includes sexual activity, it is hardly reducible to it. Rather, purity concerns conversion of the whole self to Christ, a continual and lifelong process.
 The Evangelical purity paradigm also ignores the question of how to faithfully live out one’s sexuality after getting married—especially after one has been taught to associate sex with shame and sin. This is a major flaw in Harris’s approach, which he acknowledges in his statement of retraction: “The book also gave some the impression that a certain methodology of relationships would deliver a happy ever-after ending—a great marriage, a great sex life—even though this is not promised by scripture.”

• Evangelical Gnosticism — My students are a microcosm of what I see as a growing trend in contemporary Evangelicalism. Without a guiding connection to orthodoxy, young Evangelicals are developing heterodox sensibilities that are at odds with a Christian understanding of personhood. The body is associated with sin, the soul with holiness. Moreover, this sense of the body, especially under the alias flesh, tends to be hypersexualized. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the Evangelical emphasis on purity, a word that has become synonymous with bodily virginity. Despite the biblical usage of purity as holiness in a broader, holistic sense, including but not limited to sexual matters, the word “purity” has become narrowly sexualized. It is not a virtue to be continually cultivated, but a default physical state that can be permanently lost.
• Gnosticism creeps in! — 1 minute sound bite of how Gnosticism keeps showing up.
• The Sex Education We Need (Book Review: 'Love Thy Body' by Nancy Pearcey) — She presents thoughtful challenges to Christians, urging us to resist polarizing gender stereotypes in our families and communities, which may fuel the transgender fever. She emphasizes the need to revive a radical hospitality, especially toward those who have struggled with sexual issues and thus have a unique wisdom to share. Pearcey weaves in such voices throughout the book, voices of those who don’t fit the culture-war scripts—such as Cari, a woman who has “detransitioned” from living as a trans man, or Lianne, a Christian intersexed woman who was raised as a boy. Pearcey keeps human beings complex, accentuating their dignity and situating them in a created order that, though ravaged by the fall, is nonetheless divinely designed.
• A Movement, Hijacked (Book Review: 'Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women’s Movement' by Sue Ellen Browder) — A particularly fascinating thread in the book is Browder’s nuanced profile of Betty Friedan. She was initially ambivalent about legalizing abortion; the issue of “reproductive rights” was conspicuously absent from the first edition of The Feminine Mystique. By the 1980s, she was blaming the “failure” of the women’s movement on “our blind spot about the family.” As Browder reveals, the pro-abortion movement—led by Larry Lader, the central villain of the book—was decidedly male until successfully wooing the National Organization for Women in 1967.
• Irigaray, Incarnation and Contemporary Women's Fiction: Abigail Rine: Bloomsbury Academic — Drawing on the provocative recent work of feminist theorist Luce Irigaray, Irigaray, Incarnation and Contemporary Women's Fiction illuminates the vital and subversive role of literature in rewriting notions of the sacred. Abigail Rine demonstrates through careful readings how a range of contemporary women writers - from Margaret Atwood to Michèle Roberts and Alice Walker – think beyond traditional religious discourse and masculine models of subjectivity towards a new model of the sacred: one that seeks to reconcile the schism between the human and the divine, between the body and the word. Along the way, the book argues that literature is the ideal space for rethinking religion, precisely because it is a realm that cultivates imagination, mystery and incarnation.
• Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks | Former Chief Rabbi of the UK and the Commonwealth Ph.D., King’s College - YouTube — Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks | Former Chief Rabbi of the UK and the Commonwealth Ph.D., King’s College
• Honest Trailers - X-Men: The Animated Series - YouTube — Honest Trailers - X-Men: The Animated Series

Claire Swinarski was raised near Madison by a feminist who taught her to love and value her femininity as well as the fight for women's rights. Then she converted to Roman Catholicism in college, but her feminism didn't die, it was transformed. Annoyed by what's being offered ("tea cups") to so many Catholic women, she launched her podcast to challenge this.

*Here are some great interviews:
*
Therapy, Waiting, and Sharing Yourself Online
ft. Christina Dehan Jaloway

Conversions and Comparison
ft. Sr. Miriam James Heidland

Living and Thriving on the Sexuality Spectrum
ft. Anna Carter

Eschewing Gender Stereotypes and Embracing Complementarianism
ft. Shannon Ochoa

Women's Healthcare and Natural Family Planning
ft. Leah Jacobson

Sponsored By:

• The Ultimate Catholic Comicbook: The Ultimate Catholic Comic Book is a collaboration of work from Tomics, Jason Bach, Pat Cross, and John Smillie. It was kickstarted in 2016 and now is a living and breathing document of funny pictures. Promo Code: CF

Support Catching Foxes

Links:

• The Catholic Feminist Podcast — Welcome to the Catholic Feminist, a podcast for Jesus-loving women who want to be inspired, involved, and intentional. Each week, we speak with women who are living out their faith in a radical, real way. 
• Women's Healthcare and Natural Family Planning ft. Leah Jacobson — The Catholic Feminist Podcast — There's a narrative going around right now that women's healthcare = Planned Parenthood, abortion, and birth control. But that narrative hurts young girls, puts unrealistic expectations on their beauty, and stifles the very natural process of ovulation. If you're thinking "huh?", then this episode is perfect for you. We go deep into why Leah started Guiding Star Centers, which are non-profit health centers for women, and how Guiding Star is working to change the narrative around women's fertility and healthcare. 
• Eschewing Gender Stereotypes and Embracing Complementarianism ft. Shannon Ochoa — The Catholic Feminist Podcast — This week, I'm speaking with Shannon Ochoa, the mission leader of Brew City Catholic and the co-founder of the Eden Invitation. Shannon and I chat about Edith Stein, aka St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, and how her writings on gender influenced Shannon's outlook on womanhood. In a world where half the people tell you women belong in the kitchen and the other half tell you there are zero differences between men and women besides anatomy, Shannon provides a refreshing outlook on gender roles, a woman's "place", and what it means to be female. Enjoy! 
• About Maria Johnson — In a nutshell, here’s my life. I was born in Cuba in the early 1960’s, at a time when, among other things, it was inconvenient to be Catholic AND have a conscience. My parents, lovers of freedom and no friend of the totalitarian regime still squashing human rights even as I type, came to the United States, as many do, in search of human dignity, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
• My Badass Book of Saints — "I’m so excited to introduce you to my first book, published by Ave Maria Press. It has a tough title, and a scrappy cover (don’t you love it?), but for every punch thrown — or almost thrown — on the pages within, you’ll also find a little vulnerability and tenderness, too." *affiliate link
• Super Girls and Halos - Maria Morera Johnson — What do Wonder Woman and St. Katharine Drexel have in common? How about St. Clare of Assisi and Rey, the ingenue from Star Wars The Force Awakens? All four women sought justice for the abused. *affiliate link
• Mulieris Dignitatem (August 15, 1988) | John Paul II — The personal resources of femininity are certainly no less than the resources of masculinity: they are merely different. Hence a woman, as well as a man, must understand her "fulfilment" as a person, her dignity and vocation, on the basis of these resources, according to the richness of the femininity which she received on the day of creation and which she inherits as an expression of the "image and likeness of God" that is specifically hers.